Monday, January 17, 2011

Back with Cookie Cravers Anonymous

Somehow I didn't imagine myself back here again--back to that dark place inhabited by metal folding chairs, where shadowed faces are looking into mine as I confess: "Hi. My name's Sarah. And I'm STILL a cookie craver."

That's where I was last December, when almost every cold afternoon and evening involved cookies and hot cocoa, but I guess I really expected that with a year's presence of WW in my life, I wouldn't go back to being a CC. When it came time to do the Christmas baking this year, I found out differently.

Now, it is quite normal for me to do some moderate cookie baking at Christmas time, but having passed through a season of economic hardship, I had decided that I would do more baking than usual, so that I would have a little something to share with all of our family and friends. Consequently, I made a list of nine different types of cookies, and the Monday before Thanksgiving, I started working.

Woe is me! If I had only known that my lofty cookie list would extend one big baking day into THREE. On that first Monday, I got up at 6am, and started running the pre-cut sugar cookies through the oven. Those were the easy ones. While those were baking, I mixed up two other batters. By four that afternoon, I had sugar cookies in four darling designs, two recipes of chocolate chip cookies, two recipes of gingersnaps, and a pan of butterscotch blondies. I was done. Best of all, I had managed to eat only two cookies the entire day. Not too flabby (I mean shabby, subliminally). It might also be helpful to note, that my Weight Watchers meeting was the next day, and some secret place in me wanted to be able to report my almost demi-god resistance of that many cookies at close range. I had looked Medusa in the face, and not turned to stone.

Alas, Medusa's gaze must have had a delayed effect, and alas, I must be mortal; because after my Tuesday meeting, I went back to baking, and that's when I started over-sampling the goods. The valley of the shadow of baking chips and gloppy beaters was just too much for me! There was no place to turn where cookies were not cooling. Because my daughter was snitching cookies every time my back was turned, I'd been forced to surround the living room coffee table with the three foot high extendo yard, and put the cooling racks in the enclosure. So there they were, in the MIDDLE of everything.

Still, the baking was not concluded. Yet on my list were the peanut butter blossoms, the mint-chocolate chip cookies, the white chocolate lemon biscotti, and the mint-chocolate biscotti. With Thanksgiving only two days away, I decided to post-pone the final recipes until closer to Christmas. Yes, this seemed like a good plan. I was exhausted with baking anyway, and truthfully, rather disturbed at my lingering weakness for cookies. Have them in the house seemed an impossible temptation. I was right where I was a year before. I had to have one everyday with my cup of tea. Granted, most days I managed to keep it to ONE and not FOUR, but still, a habit was re-forming.

That habit, in conglomeration with left over pecan pie from Thanksgiving, ate away at my resolve in the days following the holiday. The cookies were calling me; the pie was guilting me. Poor, poor pecan pie. I was the only one eating him up. If I didn't eat him, who would? What a terrible waste . . . .

But wait, wasn't this exactly where I was a year ago? Eating leftover food off my children's plates because after all, children were starving in Africa? No problem though, I was going to my meeting on Tuesday morning, and I would just get right back on track.

And that's when Weight Watchers, the one place (outside of church) I had come to expect dependability and stability, threw me a huge curve ball. Sigh. Cookies anyone?